A venture in regards to the challenges of displacement as a third-generation migrant by lens-based artist MAryam Touzani. Navigating her Dutch and Moroccan Amazigh heritage, Touzani examines the areas the place cultures overlap, battle, and fracture, uncovering hidden narratives of belonging and erasure. Her observe makes use of images and archival materials to query how histories are preserved or silenced, whereas creating new visible languages that embrace absence, resilience, and survival. Her collection, “Maktub” began from a way of frustration in addition to a consideration of the Arabic phrase الغربة (pronounced Al-Ghorba) that may be translated as being “away from dwelling.” Moroccan immigrants typically use it to precise emotions of estrangement blended with nostalgia:
“I grew up listening to tales of exits and other people leaving dwelling looking for a greater future. Moroccans in Europe bear a double burden. They’ve suffered racism, bigotry, and Islamophobia since childhood. And nonetheless: we attempt to juggle between discovering a spot of belonging in our beginning international locations with out discarding our heritage….By questioning myself and my experiences by myself phrases, I hope to maneuver away from simplistic narratives and as a substitute depict the complexities and nuances of migrant identities. By way of symbols, textual content, and picture collages, a poetic strategy emerges to entangle these points. My purpose with the venture is to not inform that that is the diasporic id or to supply a linear story. However to take the viewer on a journey with out clear solutions however as a substitute ambiguous questions.”
MAryam Touzani participated in our 2025 Booooooom Artwork & Photograph Ebook Award and made our shortlist.
